On Project Management

Like many academics I am woefully untrained for many aspects of my job. My route to my position, which I think is a fairly common trajectory, was to spend much of my life learning how to solve other people’s science problems, then to go on to find that I have a knack for generating interesting problems of my own. This led to my very nice Professorship where I spend much of my time teaching, training young researchers, coordinating, motivating, assessing and advising, traveling, talking, writing, and — as this blog has been reporting — developing undergraduate curricula.

For most of my tasks I manage to muddle along quite effectively, but after a few scary nightmares in which Day 1 of our new curriculum arrives and we have missed something really fundamental (in one middle-of-the-night panic attack we had forgotten to recruit any students) I realized it was time for some professional help.

This is a good time for me to introduce the superb Studies team that we have in the Materials Department at ETH so as to give you an idea of the human resources that we have available for our curriculum revision: Andrea is the Studies Coordinator and takes care of everything to do with regulations, coordination with the Rector’s office, formal processes and so on. Sara is our Educational Developer in charge of the entire pedagogical side. Martin coordinates all our lab-based and practical courses and we are ably supported by Christina in administration. Not everyone is full time so we are about 2.7 humans in total and we are recruiting for an extra 0.5 to support us during the curriculum revision process.

After catching me gazing in horror at an Excel spreadsheet during a team meeting, Andrea and Sara had the excellent idea that we should hire a Management Coach. They were anyway keen on some formal management training for their own professional development, and a coach could provide us with that as well as shepherd us through our process in a consultant role. Brilliant! We contacted ETH Human Resources who directed us to Bachmann Coaching and Consulting because of their experience working in an academic environment. Christian Bachmann agreed to get started with a one-day workshop for the core project team.

So, Sara and Andrea, three of my faculty colleagues, one colleague from the ETH Teaching Development office and myself sat down for a crash course in project management. Christian did a superb job of cramming the theory and practical essentials that we will need to survive the process, with every example and exercise geared directly to the needs of our project. This one day investment of our time probably saved us weeks of ineffectiveness as well as many sleepless nights. By sometime around mid-morning, though, I started to wonder if I would make it to lunchtime let alone the end of the day as I reinforced my suspicion that management pedagogy is really not my thing. I mean really really not.

But now we understand our goals and objectives, our stakeholders and our various roles and tasks. We’ve developed a “Project Agreement” to clarify who does what and when and why, decided on our next steps, and even taken a few of them. I would strongly recommend this tactic for a project of this size if you don’t have project management experience.

It’s also good for ending nightmares.

About Nicola Spaldin

Nicola Spaldin is the professor of materials theory at ETH Zürich. She is a passionate science educator, director of her department’s study program, and holder of the ETH Golden Owl Award for excellence in teaching. She developed the class of materials known as multiferroics, which combine simultaneous ferromagnetism and ferroelectricity, and when not trying to make a room-temperature superconductor, can be found playing her clarinet, or skiing or climbing in the Alps.

About the Irregulars

The Occam’s Typewriter Irregulars is a place for guest bloggers to write.
Some of these writers might in time have their own blog on OT; others might simply have been invited (or they asked!) to contribute a one- (or two- or three-) off post.
Enjoy!